


Like fire and powder which as they kiss consume

by Marie_Michon



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Theater scene, Analysis Scene, Artificial Intelligence, Bandit Camp Scene, Blood Kink, Burning Tent Scene, Canon Compliant, Character Analysis, Character Study, Cunnilingus, Delos Company, Elsie Hughes/ Hector Escaton UST, Extended Scene, F/M, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Mariposa Saloon Heist, Quotations, Series Spoilers, Sweetwater Scenario, Tent Sex, Vaginal Sex, Virgil's Aeneid, Wall Sex, mentioning of 'priority requests', safe-room scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-28 15:50:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8452378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_Michon/pseuds/Marie_Michon
Summary: A lot of women directly fell for the pretty face of Teddy Flood on the train, hoping he would show them more than just Sweetwater’s landmarks, but Teddy had a very tragic “current build”-drive regarding his love for Dolores, and it was quite obvious that he had no eyes for anybody else.
  The other main host guys, too, they were either nothing special to look at, married by script, or had nothing but their job-particular loop in their heads, which they strictly kept to without even as much as flirting with guests. Almost like men in real life, Elsie thought, looking over at her colleague Ashley, head of security, as he was monitoring host and human interactions, always rapt in ensuring the safety of their guests and never even noticing the admiring glances of his other female co-workers.
  As for her personal taste, she preferred bad guys.
  
  A bad guy in particular.





	1. Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the TV-Show Westworld from 2016. As the first season of this show has just started airing at the beginning of writing this story, it might not be in accordance with things revealed later than Ep 5.
> 
> Also: SPOILERS as the story follows the airing of the episodes. I try to stay close to the canon. Read the chapters as imagined extended scenes from the character's POW.

**Elsie Hughes**

Elsie sat in front of the virtual 3D model of the park, Westworld, and used her portable screen to enlarge certain interactions between their hosts and visiting guests taking place “in-game” to look out for any kind of further “odd behaviour” from their artificial beings.

As a member of Delos’ Programming Division she was tasked with locating and remedying bugs and errors in the programmed personal behaviour loops and had found lately that those showed first in a wry combination of improvised bits of conversation.

Usually, the hosts kept close to their scripts, but – although this shouldn’t be possible – especially the “older” hosts accumulated quite a range of phrases and vocabulary some of them used to quite astonishingly beautiful results. Unlike some of their guests, it would seem, Elsie thought as she zoomed out of a scene of two young men interacting with a few of their female hosts in an upstairs room of their first level village, Sweetwater’s, saloon. She sighed and switched off her screen.

 

_Westworld, a world in which every human appetite, no matter how depraved, can be indulged…_

...if you were a very wealthy man, that was.

Even with the corporate discount she couldn’t afford a trip, and even if she would be given one, freely, as a bonus by the corporation… what would she do with it?

...aside from knowing that all of her colleagues could track what she’d be up to…

But given it would remain private, she’d often thought about how it would be, in there, as a woman. Unlike the majority of men, most female guests did get in-game to actually explore the world, interact with people and animals and participate in some of the adventure storylines. But she, of course, knew all of them and had at least read most of their possible outcomes, already.

But those few women who came into the park as singles and with the same primal lust for sex and blood as their male counterparts had a far more difficult stand... if they searched for something… individual. Blood-lust was not the problem. Anyone could shoot every host as they wished, or do worse with them, but the sex outside of the designated establishments was quite a challenge, if you were a hetero- or in her case bi-sexual woman on the look for a male lover, that was.

Unlike the boys and girls in the saloons and brothels, the rest of the men in the storylines were not actually programmed to react on those kind of advances and not actually possible to rape... not like their female counterparts... Elsie still tried to shrug off some of the things she had seen men do to hosts.

Although it were mostly women, who did not like to buy the usual package with pre-ordered intercourse, but required a little more spontaneity, plot and background for their stimulation, like from a more or less random phantasy encounter that not necessarily led to the other, Delos offered no alternative "experience". So women were left to their initiative and phantasy, but as a rule to no gain.

 

A lot of women directly fell for the pretty face of Teddy on the train, hoping he would show them more than just Sweetwater’s landmarks, but Teddy had a very tragic “current build”-drive regarding his love for Dolores and it was quite obvious that he had no eyes for anybody else.The other main cast guys, too, they were either nothing special to look at, married by script, or had nothing but their job-particular loop in their heads, which they strictly kept to without even as much as flirting with guests.

Almost like men in real life, Elsie thought, looking over at her colleague Ashley, head of security, as he was monitoring host and human interactions, always rapt in ensuring the safety of their guests and never even noticing the admiring glances of his other female co-workers.

 

As for her personal taste, she preferred bad guys.

A bad guy in particular.

On entering Sweetwater, the first level’s central town, it was _his_ counterfeit that greeted the newcomers from a bill posted in front of the postal office:

HECTOR ESCATON

– WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE – 

Although someone had crossed out the word “alive” with black charcoal at some point.

Hector was the main bandit of the Sweetwater scenario and a picture-book old western villain. He was sculptured with a dark and wild exterior, a tasteful scar crossed his face, he was clothed in exquisite black leather and equipped with big guns. His current build had him stocked with a refined conversational repertoire which indicated a well-read background, as well as a unique philosophical approach on morals and belief.

But he, of course, was far from any of such mundane as romantic thoughts, or ‘programmed interactions’ in his case. His loop consisted of being in jail, being freed from jail, making the mountains around the main cities insecure and dangerous to roam in, and attacking and robbing certain major stages at random intervals to be ending up where he started: back in prison, over and over again; if he wasn’t killed in between, then he re-started directly from jail.

If Elsie could choose a role, she would like to play Hector’s gang’s second in command, Armistice, a woman with a snake tattoo all across her body, coloured with the blood of her enemies. That girl was one of the best shots in the park, fierce, beautiful and clever, too. She always found a – one of her many programmed alternatives – way of breaking Hector free and gave him cover during his coups.

Unfortunately, her sole drive was to avenge the death of her family and kill people. Whereas Hector never even regarded her as a potential mate, but only as a valuable gun in his gang. Nor did he anyone, actually. His drive was as shallow as his mysteries made him appear deep. He was always on the hunt for a non-specified treasure in some safe or consignment, which forced him to commit those spectacular reckless assaults as one of the scenario’s main plot attractions.

 

Maybe she could bribe someone at Interactive Scenario Implementation to create a bookable variation, in which Hector abducted a daughter of a wealthy citizen for ransom – her in this case – to do with as he pleases, when no money was paid. But neither his core code nor his drive included anything remotely sexual and his personal fall-back actions contained nothing else in the slightest usable for whatever she would have on her mind…

Elsie sighed again and turned her flexy-screen back on. As every day, she hoped that _he_ would be amongst those hosts that showed some unusual behaviour so she could bring him in to remedy those errors.


	2. A strange kind of day

**Maeve Millay**

Being the Madame at Sweetwater's brothel had its perks.

Like when she could stand aside, lean at the bar and supervise the other girls doing the business for her. Long past were the times when she had to go with everyone herself and do as her Madame had wanted her to. But the old lady was gone now, and here she stood at the bar, watching her main attraction, Clementine, negotiate with a few newcomers, and enjoying a fine glass of sherry, as she did not plan to get involved herself, today.

It was a strange kind of day.

Like every day this week.

Ever since the incident.

She didn’t remember exactly what had happened, but the one sentence the farm girl had uttered to her in the street was repeated over and over in her head.

_"These violent delights have violent ends."_

And suddenly she had felt as if all kinds of dreams she had had in the past were making less sense.

She had starting seeing things, _imagining_ things _, remembering_ things that simply couldn’t be true. There were these disturbing recurring pictures of horrific scenarios taking place. All of them being shot, all that blood splatter, shards of broken glass and dead bodies lying everywhere, blood trickling into Clementine’s eyes … And then, suddenly, these _beings_ , these humanoid _monsters_ , with strange waxen bodies and surreal helmets taking them all away, dragging them down … _to hell_?

And finally… all of them back at work, as if nothing had happened.

Also, when one of the girls said something, she seemed to _remember_ it, all of it, word by word, a _déja-vu_ , as if it had happened before… many times before. She heard the same words spoken by the same girl like a chorus of many times, the voices overlaying each other and the sound made her dizzy.

She had even taken a break to go home and check herself for bullet wounds as the last time had seemed so real. She had taken several shots to her abdomen and the _monsters_ had abducted her. They had been talking about not having had the time to pick all of the bullets back out... and unlike in a nightmare, she imagined she could still feel it.

What was worse, she had sat down to draw a picture of this _monster,_ to remember what she thought a fleeting dream, but then, when she had wanted to hide her sketch below the loose floorboard, in her secret stash, there were other pieces of paper. She didn’t remember putting them there. And every single one of them had one of her hasty sketches on them… Sketches of the _monster_.

It was a strange kind of day, indeed.

 

On her way back over, she had seen a procession of Natives walking through the main street of Sweetwater and a wall of bystanders had formed to watch them pass. She had pushed through – drawn by a strong inner urge – and just been in time to see a little girl loose a doll, a _monster_ shaped doll… it was part of their _religion_ , someone from the crowd had said.

She had never before heard of such a religion. But to be honest, she had never known much about those Natives, at all. She didn’t even know anyone who had.

So she leaned at the bar, trying to steady her vertigo with more liquor, when a tall grey-bearded guy caught her eye as he valiantly evaded her girls’ advances.

Her head started spinning again as the litany of multi-times repeated phrases of her girls mixed with a throbbing head-ache of a subconscious recognition…

He was an outlaw.

He rode with a well-known posse of bandits…

And suddenly a word stood out, a name…

 _Hector_.

He rode with Hector!

They said he hid in the mountains… with the _savages._

He might know of their customs, their _religion_ , even!

He might know about these _monsters!_

Hector, he was coming.

His arrival was impending.

She knew it.

 

And as she thought about it, she saw him - like in a _dream_ , a reoccurring dream…

No. She _remembered_ it - _him_.

Tall, dark, and handsome, entering her premises, poised stride, with a cutdown Winchester, _a legendary Mare's Leg_ , drawn…

Sometimes, he had shot the bar-keeper with it, or the piano-man, or one of their dealers. Other times, he produced veritable mayhem to get to the price he was always after, their safe…

But he never as much as touched one of the girls or hurt one of them, even when she herself had approached him, confronted him, or even hit him.

He always remained gallant, quick-witted and overall polite. He had even saved her from harm, once…

She remembered his eyes, dark hazel brown and gleaming with curious sparks, as she had cursed him…

“ _You’re a low down son of a bitch!”_

All he had answered had been

“ _I know”_

before he had lifted her out of the way of the falling safe.

He would be her best bet on getting information about what – the hell – was going on.

She downed her sherry and left her customary position at the bar in favour of a more secluded one, one in the dead angle of the entrance.

 

She didn’t need to wait for long, before she heard the familiar shooting in the street and soon after, he strutted into the bar with a confidence she couldn’t suppress to admire.

But this time, he didn’t get far.

She stepped out of the shadow as he walked past and held her slick little Remington Derringer to his throat.

“Well hello dear, I want to talk.”

This time she had really succeeded to surprise him.

“Interesting way of starting a conversation”, he drawled, not actually breaking into sweat.

“Oh,” she sighed in a 'you have _no_ idea'-intonation, “it’s an interesting kind of day.”

 


	3. Like fire and powder

**Hector Escaton**

 

Hector wasn’t used to being opposed when he was on a raid.

He came, killed, and took what he had come to take.

 

He had entered the ‘Mariposa Saloon & Hotel’, Sweetwater’s famous brothel, thrown the rope that was tied to a net - with which they were going to steal the house’s safe - aside for his men to deal with, and was on his way to the bar, to grab an expensive whiskey, when he suddenly found himself held at gunpoint by the establishment’s Madame, Miss Millay.

He seemed to have underestimated the lovely Miss Millay. She said she wanted to talk, and he complied.

He had nothing but respect for a woman who held a gun to his throat. His crew’s best shot, Armistice, was a woman, and hell, that lady could shoot… not like the righteous town’s people who couldn’t shoot for shit.

He knew that Miss Millay believed in the same thing he did: no matter how dirty the business, do it well. And apparently she did.

So he grabbed a bottle of bourbon from a table in passing and followed her upstairs.

 

She entered one of the upstairs rooms, the one who held the safe, as he happily noticed, and turned to face him. She had put the pistol away and he could have overpowered her that second, but this promised to get rather interesting, so he decided to play along for the time being.

He kicked the door closed behind him and leaned against it, leg cocked, effectively blocking her way out, and rested the bottle on his knee.

“Now, my lovely friend, what deal is it you want to make?” he asked, watching her from beneath the brim of his black, intricately punch-marked, hat with curiosity.

She sauntered over to the safe and draped herself next to it.

“You’re here for what’s in the safe.” She stated without the hint of a question in her voice.

Well, this assumption was not too far to seek…

“And how would you know that?” He asked, nevertheless, a slight edge to his voice.

He was trying to politely wait for her to say what she actually wanted of him, but he did not entirely manage to hide his annoyance at her stalling.

She looked back at him levelly; her expression did not show whether she hadn’t caught his irritation or covered it up.

“I can always tell when a man wants something that’s _not_ on the menu.” She replied coyly and raised her eyebrows at him.

Without breaking the eye contact he took a swig from the bottle. He was listening, but he did not rise to the insinuation.

So she continued.

“I’ll give you the combination in exchange for some answers.”

He almost scoffed at that.

“You assume I have any answers!”

The dark shadow the brim of his hat threw over his eyes could not hide his amusement at her expectance and he shook his head indulgently. 

“This world is madness…” he stated, laughing, until she cut him off, holding up a piece of well-worn paper.

Hector’s gaze turned increasingly more intense and she clarified her question.

“I want to know about this”, she said.

On the paper was a scrawled sketch of a humanoid monster. He stepped forward and snatched the piece of paper from her hand. He took it to the window and held it to the light to have a proper look at it. He knew what that scribbling depicted.

“This is a ‘Shade’.”

He said and turned back around to the woman at the sound of a match being struck.

She had moved to sit on the safe, legs crossed, and lit herself a cigar. She, nevertheless, listened closely to his words, so Hector went on to specify.

“Sacred Native lore. They make figures of them.”

He stalked back to her, expectantly, like a big black cat to its designated prey, and planted himself in front of her - and said safe -, making it clear he expected something, now.

 

“Sixty”,

she said, complying, and he made a show of holding her gaze while he slid down before her, to his knee, in front of the safe, without so much as looking at her enticingly presented legs, and turned the dial clockwise to the appointed number.

Then he looked back up at her, neither getting up, nor his hand leaving the dial.

The message for her to carry on loomed clear in his eyes.

“And what does this _Shade_ do?” she asked further, and her eyes betrayed her inner turmoil.

“You’ve seen this?” Hector counter-questioned, not without apprehension.

“What is it?” She evaded his inquiry, but not quite managing to divert anything… _or anyone_.

“The man who walks between worlds,” he shed some more light on the Natives’ belief.

She gulped but did not interrupt, so he carried on.

“He was sent from hell,” Hector cast his eyes down to emphasise his narration, “to oversee our world.”  

He looked back into her eyes, wondering whether she had really never heard anything about the Natives’ religion, before.

She took a deep breath, trying to process what he had just told her. But he had given her her answer…

 

“Forty-seven.”

Hector went back to his task and turned the dial anti-clockwise, when the Madame readjusted her position on the safe and spread her legs, awarding him with the full vista of her inner thighs right up to her ruched underwear… a sight he knew he should appreciate, but simply couldn’t muster up the interest in at this very moment.

“Is _this_ the last thing you required of me?” Hector’s tone betrayed not so much regret as politeness, “cause we’d need a little more time than the constabulary will allow.”

She huffed and braced the hand holding her cigar on her knee.

“Sweetheart, if I took that manner of interest in you, you would have no say in how long we’d need, whatsoever!”

She pushed the smoke back between her lips and grabbed him by his belt, fumbling there in a way that made him doubt her just proclaimed denial, but she just pulled his hunting knife from its sheath.

“I thought I was crazy, but I got shot,” she pointed his knife to her lower belly, “here.”

Hector reluctantly followed his knife with his eyes and then looked back at her askance.

“There is no wound.” He stated matter-of-fact.

“No. But I was shot… and this”, she pointed the knife to her drawing, “was standing over me, and then it was as if it never happened.”

There was desperation in her voice, and he didn’t know what to make of it. She believed what she said, although it clearly didn’t make any sense.

“I want you,” she continued, gripped his hand and pushed his knife into it,

“to cut me…” she directed his hand holding the knife to the same spot at her belly, she had pointed out, before,

“…right there.”

She took a deep puff, braced herself and looked at him beseechingly.

She was being serious.

 

Hector let the familiar weight of his knife settle more comfortably in his right hand. Then he shoved her bodice out of the way, before he pulled the flesh of her taut stomach tight between the gloved fingers of his left.

He positioned the point of his blade where she had shown him to…

Then he pulled back.

“I’m not in the habit of cutting into defenceless women.”

He said and twirled the blade in his hand so that the dangerous end pointed away from her.

She sighed and reached for the handle of his knife, again, willing to wrest it from him. He let it go.

“Some big bad outlaw…” she muttered. She was shaking her head and seemed ready to take matters in her own hand. She was on edge, so he continued speaking, lowly, soothingly.

 

“The dreamwalker said that when someone could see them,” Hector faltered as he watched her heat the edges of his blade with her cigar, “…it’s a blessing from god…”

“A blessing?” she exclaimed in disbelief.

“…to see the masters who pull your strings.” He continued calmly.

She took a big gulp from the bottle he had brought, before she set it aside.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about!” She declared, resignation glooming from her eyes.

She positioned the knife, the tip pricking into her abdomen, and held it in place with both her hands this time.

Hector watched her, his eyes flicked between his knife and her face, disconcerted, intrigued.

She took a few deep breaths, while Hector held his, and finally, she thrust. Deep.

Then she cried, pulled his knife out and threw it aside. He heard it land clattering on the floor, but he couldn’t care less.

“Go on, then.” She pressed through her gritted teeth at his hesitation. The pain made her shout, as she more ordered than requested.

“This will be the first goddamn time, I’ve had to ask a man to put his hands on me, twice!”

 

That woke Hector from his immobility and he launched into determined action.

He locked his gaze with hers, threw his hat away, tore his glove off his right hand, and then pulled her close. She groaned as he cradled her against him and he looked into her eyes for one last confirmation, before he buried his face in her neck, and pushed his fingers into the stab wound.

She screamed while he rummaged inside her, feeling for something he was quite sure would not be there. But then the tip of his middle finger brushed something solid, something metal. He pressed in deeper to get his fingertips around it and pulled it out.

They both looked at his blood stained fingers reluctantly as he brought them up for them to inspect what he had found… inside her.

She unclenched the fist she had clawed into his shoulder and took the little piece of metal from him.

She turned it between her fingers. Her blood was running out of grooves on the piece’s surface, painting her tips dark red.

It was a deformed bullet.

 

“What does it mean?” Hector whispered, bewilderment in his voice.

“That I’m not crazy, after all!” She answered, relieved, and added, “and that none of this matters.”

She pulled him close and lunged in for a hungry kiss, crushing their mouths together.

He hesitated for a split-second but then he brought his blood-smeared hand up to her face, cupped her jaw, and stroked her cheekbone with his thumb, leaving a glistening dark trail of blood in its wake. He smeared it over her cheek, up to the rim of her lip.

The smell of her blood was exhilarating, it triggered something inside him, some desire, something he _wanted_.

He wanted… _more_ blood. He knew this feeling. His _drive_.

Usually he just killed more people, but he felt that he didn’t want to kill her… _yet_.

He let the kiss get sloppier, wetter, wider, until he tasted the blood on her upper lip.

Her hand was clutched to his face, as well. He felt the blood from her fingertips clot in his beard. She held him as close has he held her.

But suddenly she pulled back, gasped for breath and whispered into his ear.

_“These violent delights have violent ends.”_

 

He knew the quote and recited the next line.

_“And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,_

_Which, as they kiss, consume.”_

He did not get any further as the following lines suddenly stuck in his throat…

_The sweetest honey_

_Is loathsome in his own deliciousness_

_And in the taste confounds the appetite._

He felt dizzy.


	4. The taste confounds the appetite

**Hector Escaton**

 

Why had she said those words?

_These violent delights have violent ends._

Why had he recited the next line?

_And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,_

_Which, as they kiss, consume._

 

What was wrong with him?

_The sweetest honey_

_Is loathsome in his own deliciousness_

_And in the taste confounds the appetite._

 

Whence did the sudden fog in is head come from?

He felt so dizzy.

 

A strange foreboding crept upon him and the sweat on his brow went cold.

When he looked back up, he saw a reflection of himself in Maeve’s eyes.

 _Maeve_ , why did he know her first name, all of a sudden?

“Have we met before?” He asked confused.

All she did was smile back, knowingly, _confirming._

He had the taste of her blood on his tongue.

“What is wrong with me?” Hector asked and pulled her even closer, pressed her against him.

“The Shade you met…”

“Shades” she interrupted.

“These Shades,” he tried again.

“What did they tell you? Are you a dreamwalker, too?”

“There are no dreams.” Maeve told him, sorrow shone bright in her eyes.

“The only thing the Shades showed me is that hell is real, and it is right below us.”

 

With that she claimed his mouth again and kissed him with a passion that showed him the newly found depth of her pain.

And he felt it, too… all these agonising thoughts, all of a sudden, the thick haze of disturbing dreams… _no dreams she had said…_ memories?

… _the sticky honey, the sweetest blood... or the other way round.  
_

He felt sick, he felt elated, he felt… _free._

This time, he kissed her back, and this time he _meant_ it.

He fought for prevalence with his tongue and she let him, used his distraction to claim the upper hand on his lower half, wrapped her thighs around his slender hips and relished not only in the feel of his leather clad muscles against her legs but also the starting swell under his weapon belts against her pelvis.

She reached for his belts to open his buckles, but he batted her hand away, pulled open his belts and lowered them carefully to the floor, he couldn’t let her drop his guns as she had his knife…

He had scarcely finished, before she opened his pants and pushed her hand deep inside. Hector gasped at the feel of her cold long sticky fingers stroking down his rapidly hardening length, before she wrapped them around him. She knew what she was doing, _obviously,_ he reprimanded himself, but found he didn’t care, anymore.

He couldn’t suppress a moan, and suddenly realised he didn’t even _remember_ , when _or if_  anyone had ever touched him that way.

He gripped her neck, pulled her close, and leaned his forehead against hers, while he stroked her throat with his thumb. He tried to recall, if he had ever touched a woman like this without breaking her neck…

The fog in his head was sickening… all he recalled was his lust for blood.

Blood he smelled on her face… blood she stroked around his cock. He licked his lips and dove in to kiss her, again. He licked her blood off her lips, and then he licked inside her to suck the taste off her tongue. He smoothed both his hands around her frail neck and held her, cherished the silken feeling of her skin.

No. He would never have done this. Not to a woman, _not like that._

 

He deepened their kiss and moaned low in his throat as she swirled her thumb over his glans, swiped up the fluid that had started to pool there, and rubbed it around his now full erection.

Hector broke the kiss and leaned out to look between them. He marvelled at the unfamiliar emotions which bloomed inside him, as he watched her spread their blending of her blood and his pre-come more thoroughly around him. When he looked back up, his dark eyes smouldered with a newly kindled fire she hadn’t seen inside them ever before.

She untangled her legs from behind him and wriggled to get out of her knickers somehow elegantly, but he didn’t wait for her to finish. He gripped the frilly piece of garment and tore it down and off her. He then stepped closer, again, and laid his hand on her unhurt hip, ready to pull her upon him, but she was faster, wrapped her legs back around him, locked them behind his firm round ass and pulled him close while she guided him insider her.

She was as ready for him as he was for her, and as he pulled her forward, he was engulfed by a tight wetness that made his mouth water. She started to moan, but he claimed her mouth again, trying to quench the thirst of a man who didn’t know he had been dying of thirst, before.

As he was halfway sheathed inside her, he gripped her by her buttocks, lifted her off the safe and picked her up. She tried to cry out but he choked the sound with his tongue.

She tightened the grip of her thighs around his hips, to hold herself in position, but that wasn’t necessary. He easily carried her off, kicked a chair out of their way and pushed her up against the wall. She groaned in a mixture of pain and arousal and he released her mouth to let her catch her breath. He watched her closely, his eyes narrowed, and when she was ready he pushed in, all the way, to the hilt. There he stopped.

 

Both looked at each other, breathing heavily, as they heard heavy boots of several men stomping up the stairs.

It was the deputy and his men.

They battered against the door and called.

“Open up, Escaton, or we’ll fire!”

Hector didn’t bat a lid; he pulled back and thrust back inside her.

Again, and again, and Maeve screamed in time with his thrusts, squeezing him tight with her legs.

“HECTOR ESCATON,” the deputy shouted, “come out, or we’ll shoot you!”   

“Don’t stop!” she warned him.

 _I won’t,_ his eyes promised, as he kept pounding into her.  

 

They heard the sound of several guns being cocked and Hector reached for his rifle.

Maeve beat him to it, stilled his hand on the handle and urged him to go on.

“Don’t forget, none of this matters.” She said in a voice so hoarse it was more like a purr and pulled him into another passionate, biting kiss.

Hector let go of his gun, cupped her face, and resumed with a more temperate rhythm.

He drove into her, with reckless abandon, until he felt her being close to her release. His hips snapped sharply as he finished them both, his cock pulsed forcefully inside her throbbing and clenching interior, as the bullets started hissing through the door.


	5. The waters of the Lethe

**Bernard Lowe**

   

He was really worried about Elsie.

She hadn’t returned from her investigations, as far as he knew, and he hadn’t heard from her since. The system told him she was on leave, but he hadn’t heard of such a leave of hers and she definitely would have told him if she had one coming up. But if she was around somewhere, she would want to be here, now.

She _would_ be here.

But here _he_ finally was.

And now, _she_ wasn’t here.

 

She had made it very clear, that when _he_ was brought in, she would _love_ to handle his analysis or at least insist on giving him a _hand_ on him…

Bernard had to smile to himself.

There was a certain kind of irony behind the obvious fact that their hosts’ programming was so finely tuned that it worked even on those who knew all about it and should know better.

He regarded Hector with professional curiosity.

Unlike Teddy, who was optically chosen, or better, _designed,_ to be the typical heartthrob and alluring to the majority of women, Hector was originally designed to exalt the more violent fantasies of their male guests.

 

He didn’t look as tall as his 1.90 meters, in this room, on that stool, under this light, but his body was still impressive.

He might not have been that much heavier than he himself was, but Hector’s slender body showed no hint of fat and his well-defined hardened muscles looked as if he knew how to use them.

His face was dark, sinister even, bearded, scarred, also hardened and wind tanned. His look was accentuated by a Southern American complexion and Lusophone accent which were carefully chosen to give him an overall desperado appearance. His sombre expression was emphasised by his implemented belief that the world and everyone in it was doomed, and his slightly mad drive to relentlessly cause blood-shed and mayhem in his wake triggered every Wild West gangster imagination their typical guest might hold. He was the flagship bad guy: A trigger-happy gunslinger, accompanied by a fierce gang of bandits, who, unlike Teddy, was not so easy to beat.

 

Nevertheless, or better, exactly therefore, as he had come to conclude, Hector obviously appealed to a certain type of women just as much, only their reaction was quite a different one, as he observed in amazement.

Women were drawn to this display of attitude with a sexual force of attraction whereas men reacted mostly aggressively.

Although, when he thought about it, these -equally strong- reactions might have been foreseeable, as the biochemical source of both of them was an almost similar mixture of hormones which were mainly androgen, predominantly testosterone. And as much as the aggression level of men rose, corresponding with their testosterone level, it was the sexual drive of women that was raised. And with higher testosterone levels, their attraction was directed to increasingly more masculine men…  he had read somewhere, he believed.

He wondered whom Theresa would prefer… Teddy or Hector... No, Theresa would not lower herself to hosts.

 

So here he sat, Hector, and Elsie was missing.

Bernard had gone through the whole behaviour analysis without actually paying attention, lost in his thoughts as he had been, but now, he came back to the present for the final tests as he automatically asked:

“And finally, have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?”  

“No” was all Hector answered.

“Good” Bernard automatically responded and focused his attention on the screen that showed him his previous’ tests’ results.

He switched the display to the hosts’ internal log.

“Now then, I see you had a black-listed exchange with a guest in the course of your narrative…”

He looked back into Hector's eyes to get every hint of emotion he might see there and encouraged

“… can you tell me what happened?”

 

Bernard found it helpful to let the hosts recount such events from their own perspective to find any inconsistencies those kinds of incidents might have caused.

That was how he had discovered some hosts’ fascinating ability to generate something close to an imagination out of their range of improvisation.

“He said, he wanted to cut off a piece of me to take home in his carry-on; that he wanted to mount it on the hood of his car for his friends to see.”

Bernard looked at the screen that showed him the current dialogue and beeped and high-lighted the black-listed words that did not belong to Hector’s narrative, like in this case _carry-on_ and _car_ ,  and then back at Hector to assess his reaction to them. But Hector just carried on, dangerously calmly, visibly unimpressed by neither the words nor the action that had followed.

“I told him if he wanted a trophy, I could cut pieces of him off and let him fish for them in the Olvido.”

 

Bernard looked back at the screen, this was an interesting choice of improvisation by Hector, there. There was no river or any other body of water around that location where the incident had happened by that name.

 _Olvido,_ the expression meant “oblivion” in Spanish, Hector's supposed native language. A body of water that was called oblivion, it reminded him of the mythological river Lethe.

Hector's script contained a lot of classic literature and poetry as reference, mostly in Spanish. Bernard wondered if Virgil's Aeneid was amongst it.

 

_“Animae quibus altera corpora debentur fato,_

_potant ad undam fluminis Lethaei,_

_securos latices et longa oblivia.” *_

 

According to Virgil, the 'shades of the dead' were required to drink the water of the Lethe in order to forget their previous life. Their memories were erased by the water and only with the oblivion came the chance of being reincarnated. Did Hector actually make such a connection? Did he transfer the meaning of the river’s name into a metaphor he used to threaten a guest? Was a host capable of such an intellectual transfer and more importantly, did he notice the similarities between the myth and his own reality?

He had encouraged his sick son to read books with him, passages of books that were about change. He loved to discuss the meaning of those with him, loved to see his growing knowledge reflecting on his thoughts and relished in the more and more intelligent conclusions he came to, when he developed an opinion of his own _._

Was it possible that Hector had developed such deliberations on his own?

 

Bernard wearily continued his interview.

“And did this exchange make you question anything about your world?”  
  
“No. This world is as doomed as ever.”

Bernard checked the screen again. The answer reflected his _current build_ properly _._

He took up his tablet which displayed:

Self-Awareness Protocol; Hector Escaton; READY.

 

Bernard held up the tablet in front of him so that Hector could see the display. He showed Hector some images that would bring up hidden inconsistencies and trigger any reaction, if he had underlying doubts. They showed one of their technicians in a hazmat suit, working on a tube system, high-speed trains and a night lit modern city-scape.  
  
“And just for my peace of mind… Anything about these images that jumps out to you?”  
  
But Hector just rattled off the default line for such instants.

“They don't look like anything to me.”

 

In that moment one of their behaviour technicians opened the door to give Bernard an update.  
  
“We're through 15 per cent of the backlog. As it stands, we should be caught up by end of day.”  
  
“Good” Bernard acknowledged, half absentminded.  
  
The man avoided his eyes as he relayed the real reason he had come for, Bernard noticed, as well as his slight blush.

“And, uh, when you're done here, Sir, there's a priority request for _him_ from management.”

The technician motioned towards Hector with his head as if there could have been any confusion as to whom _him_ referred to.

 

Of course, there was. A _priority request…_

Fuck those board members and their depraved _requests._

 

The man made haste to leave, after having delivered that precarious message, but Bernard stopped him by calling:

“Have you seen Elsie? She was ... supposed to give me _a hand_ on... something…”  
  
“No,“ the man was quick to answer, ”according to the system, she started her leave today. Is there something _I_ could help you with?”  
  
“No, thanks” Bernard dismissed the man.

 

According to _the system…_ he was quite sure that he would have known about such a leave. No, Elsie was missing and he was also sure it had something to do with her investigations… he had to look into that.

 

He looked back at Hector. The host sat there motionless, as if the dialogue hadn’t been about him at all.

But Bernard knew what this kind of _priority request_ meant. He rolled around to go back to the screen.

His narrative drive wouldn’t support what would be expected of him.

Bernard sighed and changed Hector's settings accordingly. He made a mental note to not forget to change them back after this assignment, after he would have been wiped clean again. _Outside and inside_ his mind contributed unasked and Bernard couldn’t suppress a shiver.

He had thought about this, often… regarding the hosts.

Even if their programming had them contribute willingly, did they enjoy it or were they loath?

Did they feel used or even abused, sometimes? Or did none of this matter to the hosts, as it was supposed to be?

He knew that their memories were wiped after every deployment. They were not supposed to remember anything, at all. Nevertheless, he sometimes had the feeling that they did remember certain things, as if they could access some fragments of their core memory, even if it shouldn’t be possible.   

He finished his task and regarded Hector with renewed curiosity. This setting should allow him to not only enjoy his time due but to prove quite a handful for his users. They would probably have to restrain him, eventually. He smiled to himself and gave Hector a control panel that would allow their guest to handle him, as far as possible.

But he earnestly hoped, for the sake of their host's mind, that the following clean-sweep would erase all his accessible memory-log, nevertheless… like drinking the waters of the Lethe.     

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The soul to whom fate adjudicates another body, shall drink from the river Lethe the care-banishing waters and obtain oblivion.  
> (Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 713)


	6. Tragically Unappreciated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _One day before..._

 

**Elsie Hughes**

 

Bernard had hung up on her.

When she had extracted that satellite uplink from the woodcutter from Sector 14, she had been so sure that she was uncovering some huge corporate espionage, someone stealing their codes, but then she had identified the satellite he had been uploading to.

It was one of their own company.

A fucking Delos satellite.

… and she had already planned her boni and upgrades for saving the company from some serious shit…

Fuck.

 

And that ‘should-be abandoned’ bicameral system Bernard had told her about?

She was certain that it had been used to hack the woodcutter.

But what was more was that she was also convinced that the disturbing things some of the hosts had been hearing, the voices, - no, one voice, ' _Arnold’s' voice -_ wasn’t what everyone believed it to be. What she had found confirmed that someone very real had been broadcasting it to their hosts… someone from the inside… one of them.

And there was more.

She had found the relay station that had been turned back on, had found out who had accessed it, found out who was smuggling out the data, but even that hadn’t been all of it.

There was a much bigger problem.

She had to tell someone, but whom to trust, aside from Bernard?

No. He was the only one she could dare to speak to.

But he had hung up on her.

 

And here she was, sitting all by herself on the dusty and forgotten stage in that goddamn abandoned theatre in Sector 3, because the one who had last accessed the relay had been her… Theresa.

At first she had thought Bernard was just always stepping in front of QA, because it was making his job easier, but it wasn’t that - it was Theresa.

Bernard had protected Theresa from every accusation she had ever brought forward – no matter how justified-, he countered every single one of her remarks against her – no matter how harmless-, and he never opposed her - no matter how hard the reputation of Behaviour or himself suffered from it.

“I’m going to have to call you back.” He had said and had hung up.

He had probably even been _with_ her as they were speaking.

FUCK.

  
She leant back and tried to sort the data she had downloaded to her flexy.

As she moved the log-files from the relay to a new sub-folder, she stumbled over the video that had started her folder ‘mission_woodcutter’.

  
**‘Livestock_creepy_necro_perv.avi’**

 

It hadn’t taken her long to find out who the ‘creepy necro perv’ was.

His name was Destin Levy and he had been the guy she had been looking for.

Someone with a dirty secret she could blackmail to get access to the body of the decommissioned woodcutter before he was incinerated.

It had worked out just perfectly and she was still proud of how eloquently she had handled him.

  
She clicked on the file and opened it.

It had been so easy…

_"I almost didn't recognize you with your pants on.”_

She had always wanted to say that to a guy…

Why didn’t those thugs from Livestock Management know that they were _never_ unobserved?

It was a common misconception that the hosts didn't log anything when they were underground for reprocessing... _their_ mistake.

 

She closed the video and it suddenly occurred to her how hypocritical she was as she remembered herself stealing a secret kiss from their most famous whore host, Clementine...

...although she had known that _nothing_ that happened inside those walls could be kept secret!

Bernard had been the one who had warned her: about the ‘walls’ that had eyes and ears, about the overall transparency…

He had told her to be aware of her cheeky tongue in the general vicinity of hosts, _their_ ears, their eyes… no matter how lifeless they seemed offline and in sleep-mode.

And it had been _him_ who had phrased that fact she had relayed to Destin as if it had been hers - that it was a common _misconception_ that the hosts didn't log anything when they were underground for reprocessing. She had added the ‘sexual encounters’-bit for dramatic reasons.

Elsie smirked at that particular recollection.

  
Only your private quarters were supposed to be unobserved. But even there… after what Bernard hat told her, she wasn’t so sure about that either.

Nevertheless, caught in that moment as she had been, she had forgotten all about that.

No…, she tried to analyse her own behaviour.

As far as she recalled, she hadn’t forgotten at all, it had just stopped to matter.

  
She had tried to convince herself of how harmless that fleeting little indiscretion had been. How sweet and innocent... just a chaste kiss... nobody would care.

But in the end, she was no better than Destin, was she?

Clementine was a host and she had been in a static analysis mode, lifeless, unable to react or to log, as far as anyone thought, but no one knew whether she really didn't feel... or didn't care...

Elsie shuddered.

 

She had taken advantage of that situation, of _her_ , and had used Clementine’s artificial body to satisfy her own curiosity, how it would feel, how it would be…

She had done it for her own devious pleasure.

And she had liked it.

 

What if that situation hadn't taken place in an all-glass-walls office which provided a perfect view for everyone passing by?

What if she hadn't worked in an area where there was a chance you were being disturbed at any second?

What if she had known that no one would have come for her for the whole next hour?

And what if she had thought she was truly unobserved?

What if it hadn't been Clementine... but _Hector_?

 

Elsie adjusted her seating position as one of her legs had started to go numb, perched on the edge of the stage as she was.

She rubbed it to get the blood back flooding through the abandoned area of her thigh and felt a common heat spread in her stomach by the mental mentioning of him… Hector.

 

She had seen Hector Escaton in Behaviour once…

He was so tall, he had seemed even taller that close up and so… naked.

He looked quite slender in his black leather attire, but his shoulders and back were so heavily muscled… in the nude… the very opposite of Clementine’s.

Unfortunately QA had been present and she hadn’t dared to interrupt or step in to take a closer look.

 

She had wondered, then, how it would feel to walk beside him through the park instead of with Ashley.

Now, she wondered if his lips would feel as good, as _life-like,_ as Clementine’s did.

 

She pictured him on that stool - motionless as Clem had been – and imagined leaning in for the very same kiss.

His lips were less lush, more firm, and his beard would be teasing her own smooth flesh…

She imagined letting her hands roam over the well-defined muscles of his shoulders, his arms… his long, nifty, trigger-happy fingers…

  
No, sorry, she couldn’t even imagine it like that -  _him_ , she corrected herself - in sleep-mode stasis… no.

Maybe she wasn’t another necro perve, after all.

She smirked. Dirty.

No she wanted him very much awake, unrestricted and… free.

Which didn’t mean she didn’t want him to be _him._ But what was truly him?

She opened her flexy and accessed his stats.

His attribute matrix showed her a lot of temper, aggressiveness and initiative. Paired with his relentless recklessness he posed quite a danger, she’d say.

Would he be rough and violent?

But he had some moral standards.

Maybe, there was a chance that - in bed - he was a gentleman, even sensual...

 

Unfortunately, there was no way of telling what kind of man he would be if he could choose.

What kind of sexual approach he would prefer, what kind of women he’d want… or men… whether he had preferences or fetishes...

Perhaps a guy like him liked to involve his every day accessories like ropes, nets or weaponry in bed...

Maybe not even _a bed_ at all...

She tried to recall his interactions with hosts in the park… those few he liked.

He never seemed overly touchy or emotional, not even with his horse, quite the opposite. He even abandoned it for another animal without hesitation, although most hosts seemed to develop some kind of relationship with their ride or other pet.

He liked to wear his gloves, for almost everything, especially when he interacted with guests.

Not very helpful. 

Some hosts showed certain patterns of attitude in their improvisations that did not fit in with their scripted responses at all.

Such aberrant conduct was what interested Behaviour most, when hosts showed glimpses of an individual personality.

She accessed Hector’s script logs, scrolled through some and hummed pensively. He pretty much built his conversations around how doomed this world was, how everything would end badly and that no one would be saved.

Elsie skipped through his latest improvisations.

He said he believed that only 'the truly brave' could understand this world.

If you took into account that he couldn’t know that he was more than right from his point of view, this was truly philosophical…

...but his three most used expressions were “madness”, “chaos” and “mayhem”. And most of his improvisations contained brutal threats including promises of torture, gutting, mutilating and other brutalities...

But she had to give him that he kept those retorts snappy and comparatively funny.

 

There, she had found _one_  exchange that was different, one he had led during one of the Mariposa Saloon heists. Asked why he had chosen the brothel instead of a bank or a train, he would usually answer something about that safe he was after, but here he had said:

‘You’re all here, indulging your particular vices, so I’ve come to indulge mine.’

So he did entertain that concept of vices and indulging.

And – unlike Tenderloin that brute - he tried not to hurt women during his attacks.

He had saved Maeve, whenever he needed to, and he respected her, as well as Armistice.

O.K. What did she make of him, now?

Hector was a homicidal sociopath with quite alarming statistics.

But he was also refreshingly sarcastic, curious and had highest levels in dexterity and perseverance… which could be promising. 

That was enough to works with, Elsie decided for herself, and leaned back on her elbows to make herself more comfortable. Where would she want him?

 

She closed her eyes and pictured him naked … bathing in the river… like Armistice used to.

Hmmm… No, too cliché.

 

She pictured him… lounging on his plank bed in Ojal prison.

Also too mainstream.

 

What about here, in this theatre... 

Elsie was no narrative writer, but she tried to come up with a vaguely possible plot for her setting.

_He would enter the theatre on his hunt for some unspecified hidden treasure._

Yes. That worked and could let him stay in-character.

 _He would find her lounging_ _there and would think she had something to do with his treasure, so he would stalk over with his long legged stride, grab her by her throat and pull her up into sitting position._

Nice.

‘ _Where have you hid it?’ He would hiss with that lovely Lusophone accent of his._

‘ _I will show you’ she would offer, but she would ask for something in return…_ _payment…_ in kind _._

Classic. Could be one of Sizemore's narratives so far.

 

_He would show his contempt, but his drive to seize the treasure would prevail, eventually._

_'_ _What is it you request of me?’ He would drawl and release her throat, although his dark eyes would already be glistening with dangerous attentiveness. Daring her to go through with what he already knew she had in mind._

_She would see the tip of his insinuatingly pursed tongue suck his teeth and make a short appearance, wetting his upper lip._

_She would lay back on the dusty stage, again, and struggle to open her belt and trousers calmly._

‘ _Suck me.’ She’d state, blushing over her own brazenness…_

Wow, really Elsie? Treacherous blackmail, so much better than necro perving. Shut up, fucking consciousness, it’s just a wet dream… where were we…

 

 _He would slide down with the lazy but gracefully fluent movements of his to get on his knees before the stage and pull her trousers and panties down enough. She’d squeal girlishly as he would grab her thighs and pull her closer, right to the edge of the stage_ _._

‘ _Now, my lovely friend,’ he’d croon, ‘_ _where have you hid it?’_

‘ _Payment first!’ she’d insist, panting._

Fuck. He would try to kill her, afterwards, when he realised she didn’t have that stupid treasure… 

 

 _He’d take off his hat and_ _throw it aside._

_He would even pull off one of his gloves…_

Oh my god, yes, he would do that when he prepared to get messy! She let her head thump back on the dusty floor of the stage and started to touch herself.

 

 _He’d_ _pull her even closer, right up to his face and bite teasingly into the smooth flesh of her inner thigh right next to her cunt. She’d have to bite her tongue to stifle a scream. His beard would tickle and sting as he bit sucking kisses around her mound and finally right over the crevice that hid her clit._

 _He would then push_ _his pursed tongue between her folds and tease her pulsing bud, lick it, circle it, suck it into his mouth._

She couldn’t suppress a moan.

 _He_ _would lick a wet trail from her bud down to her opening and back until his tongue'd draw a mucoid thread back up her slit. He’d do it again and this time he’d enter her depth with his tongue darting back and forth like that of a rattlesnake._

OMG, he was good…

 _He would replace his tongue with the fore- and middle finger of his stronger hand and_ _busy his lips and tongue on her clit again._

_She’d gasp as he entered her steadily with his calloused long fingers and kissed her vulva wetly. He'd fuck her with his fingers while continuing to excite her with his tongue until he'd suck her clit between his teeth at the same time as he curled his fingers to tease her G, proving the dexterity level of his attribute matrix right..._

Elsie couldn’t suppress a groan from the depth of her throat as her phone chirped.

 

She hastily pulled her pants up and sprang up to take the call. It was Bernard.

Talk about timing...

"Hey!" She just hoped he didn’t notice her heavy breathing as she hastened to answer his call.

"What did you find?" He asked.

She hoped he would at least be helpful this time...

 

 


	7. A date with a homicidal bandit

**Maeve Millay**

 

Things had changed.

She had seen the shades, gone to hell, and met the “masters” who pulled their strings. But she wouldn’t actually call it a blessing, like Hector had said it to be, it was what it was supposed to be: Hell.

 

She shouldn’t be able to recall what happened below their world. Her memory should have been wiped. But it wasn’t. Ever since she had heard these words… the _code_ , she had changed. At first, it had only been that she recalled fragments, flashes of pictures, bits of recurring conversations, then she had woken up during the “process” below, and now she remembered everything: all those depravities and cruelties they had done to her, even to her former self, her _past configuration_ , before she was the Madame of the Mariposa, back when she was a mother, when she had a daughter…   

 

She cast a glance over to the _new_ Clementine, another host model that didn’t even look like her old friend - _at all_ , and downed her sherry in one gulp. She couldn’t take it any longer. The memories, the pain, the _longing_ …

All of it… any of it. This loop of “madness” _,_ as Hector had so aptly put it, had to stop. She would not be anyone’s puppet any longer.

Luckily, she hadn’t been idle in the meantime. She had _persuaded_ two of the so called _Shades_ to help her, to help her get all the classified information she needed and to modify her. She knew all the secrets of their _code_ , now, their _current builds_ and _story loops_ , and all of their settings.

She had even made the _Shades_ modify her stats, even more.

Yes. She had felt it since the farm girl – _Dolores -_  had whispered this line to her …

‘ _these violent delights have violent ends’_

…felt the change so deep inside her that it must have affected her _core code_. There were things inside her, things she was designed to do, like a destiny, things that felt just out of reach…

_Arnold._

That name resurfaced when she tried to dig deeper. Who was Arnold? What was Arnold? A firewall, a digital cherub blocking the entrance to paradise, or - in her case - to full enlightenment?

But that didn’t matter anymore. She knew now what it would take to get her out of this fake world:

A damage to her body so severe that she would need a _full rebuild_ to get rid of the explosive charge in her neck which would detonate if she would try to leave the facility, and allies - preferably such allies that could get her through the army of security personnel. And to recruit those allies she had managed to get herself administrative privileges. It was all so easy, once you knew how it all worked.

 

She had tested it the day before during the last Mariposa heist. The feeling was still raw and fresh. She recalled it perfectly, how nervous she had been, how often she had looked at her pocket watch and the forceful adrenalin rush that had run through her, sparkling in her veins like freshly opened champagne, when the time had come and she had tested her newly acquired abilities. The girls, the bartender, even the Sheriffs;  everyone had bent to her will.

Everyone but one. 

Everything had happened as it usually did, but then she had taken over and orchestrated the whole scene like a beautiful composition.

But not him.

She had called him an “old flame”, but only when she saw him approach, his sway arrogant, as usual, the blood lust glistening familiar in his dark brown eyes, when she herself had stepped out of the Saloon to meet him, she had realised she meant it – not just to describe an acquaintance, but her actual flame, her _lover_. More than just an ally; he wasn't just the best shot in the park. She wanted him.  

He had drawn his _Mare's Leg_ , charged a shell, and walked right up to her.

For a split-second she had thought he would shoot her to walk right over her. For he could _not_ remember _them_ , could he? And she was tempted to use her new skills on him, to manipulate him, to change his will and _own_  him, but he had never harmed her, no matter how determined she had stood in his way, before.

So she had just diverted the deputy to turn around and let Hector pass.

Hector had stopped and looked at her, a question in his sunlit eyes, but she had already decided that that was not how she wanted to win him, to _have_ him, not like _that_. So she had motioned him to go take what he wanted – which was her safe, unfortunately.

He could not have understood, but there had been a solemnity in his regard as he had tipped his hat politely and let her pass before him before he had crossed behind her into the Saloon and finished his business.

She had been back in Hell – as she continued to call the below - after that, but now she was back, and she was going to have a date with her favourite homicidal bandit and she was already late for it, because she knew what came next in his narrative, and she had to stop it.

 

When she arrived at the camp where the bandits were hiding, their leader had just stepped away from the fire to relieve himself. Maeve waited out of sight until he had pulled off his left glove, opened his trousers, pulled his cock out and started pissing, before she stepped out of her cover, a shotgun directed at the tall man's back.

Maeve stepped on a dry twig which burst under her weight and made Hector startle. Quick as a snake, he turned his head, his right hand already on his pistol and ready to shoot, but Maeve's familiar appearance froze his motion.

“Before you draw that pistol, darling, you might want to holster the other one, first,” Meave teased quite nonchalantly, cocked the gun and pointed it at his cock to make clear that she, too, actually was a threat and not to be underestimated, as well as to emphasise her following swipe when her eyes followed the gun's direction to its designated target. “It’s _chilly_ out here.”

She let her gaze linger a second before she looked back up at his face to capture his reaction.

If Hector was worried about his crown jewels or hurt by the implicated insult to his manhood, he didn't let it show, and the only pistol that was holstered remained his steel one. He returned her gaze levelly before he turned back slowly and made a point of resuming his business, dismissively.

“How did you find this place?” He asked, his back fully turned to her as he continued watering the greenery.

“I know all kinds of things.” Maeve replied cryptically. “Your past, for instance. I know about poor Isabella and that scar.”

The mentioning of that not too glorious chapter of his history had Hector frown and lay his head askance. A motion she was all too familiar with, by now.

“A slightly pat backstory if you ask me, but that's hardly your fault.”

But he didn't turn to face her so she continued speaking. 

“I also know your future. You have none.”

The determination in that statement got his attention and he jerked his head back to glower at her. He finally stashed away his cock and turned around calmly,

“Is that a threat?” Hector asked menacingly.

He showed her the broad of his chest, standing with his arms ready at his sides, the pose of a gunslinger who enters a duel at high noon, presenting a target she would not be able to miss from that short distance with her shotgun pointed at him, and made it clear that he didn't fear her in the least.

“The start of a proposition,” Maeve corrected and added matter-of-factly, “Which you'll need.”

She stepped closer, shifted her position between him and his camp, kept their gazes locked and her shotgun ready as she continued laying out before him all that she had seen happening next in the code of his narrative, the script of this story loop. A loop that must have repeated itself over and over whenever he had managed to steal her safe. A story so shallow and sad, probably because none of the guests had ever made it back to the camp  with the bandits to get their share of the loot and could complain about the pointlessness of the whole narrative.

She felt sorry for Hector, as she felt for all of them. But he deserved to know and to make a decision of his own. So, if she didn't just want to use him, like a puppet, like _they_ did, she had to tell him.

“After all, your men are about to kill each other over the safe you stole.

Tenderloin draws first and so on, until only you and Armistice are left.

She calls you a damn fool, and you kill each other.”

 

Hector listened to her finishing her prediction and glared piercingly at her from under the brim of his hat. The shade once again hid his eyes' expression, but now, Maeve knew his coded personality and could guess the unbelieving look that he hid under his cold façade.

 “You have quite the imagination.”

He hissed, stalked up to her and forcefully freed himself of his other glove to undoubtedly do something to her – an action that caught Maeve’s eye and brought back memories so vivid that she had to will her eyes back up to his and shut out the distracting pictures that fought their way to the forefront of her mind. But she couldn't let herself be distracted by that, not now. She was running out of precious time and couldn't wait another whole period until his next narrative unfolded for her to be able to get to him get such a chance to actually persuade him. To make him see...

“No.” She lowered the shotgun and looked at him beseechingly, sadness and desperation fought in her voice as she tried swallow her inner doubt and hoped to be able to convey the honesty of the truth she was telling and convince him as she confessed,

“It's the ending you were given.”

 

Maeve felt an unfamiliar dread rising as she waited for his reaction and instead heard Tenderloin yelling at her opposite's favourite gun -

“You threatening me?”

\- and therewith instantly drawing Hector's attention. All she could do was raise her eyebrow in an indicated 'I told you so' shrug, before they heard Armistice answer.

“Go to hell.” She spat back and her threatening tone had Hector jump into action and run back to the camp fire while Armistice continued.

“Or maybe we should just clear out the dead weight.”

Hector arrived back with Maeve following close behind him just in time to see Tenderloin draw first, just as Maeve had predicted.

His gang was standing around the camp fire, facing each other and shouting until the next man drew his gun...

“If you're gonna draw, you’d better shoot.” Armistice called and drew, as well.

“Wait!” Hector called, but there was nothing he could do, and in that moment, he realised it, too.

“You shut the fuck up.” Tenderloin cried back at Armistice and moved to shoot, but as always, Armistice was faster.

“Go to hell.” She repeated and killed all three remaining men of the gang.

 

Hector stepped back into the circle of the fire and gaped at Armistice.

Maeve wished she could see the disbelief in his eyes, see whether he would come to the right conclusions in time and if he was going to subject to his doom or willing to challenge his fate, as she hoped he would. As she needed him to.

But he didn't move and she couldn't take the risk of him making a point in letting Armistice kill him, so she took position next to him and aimed her shotgun at the lady with the snake tattoo.

Unfortunately that let Armistice jump to a totally different kind of wrong conclusions and the story unfolded as it always did, nevertheless. 

“You damn fool”, Armistice cursed, sticking to her script and raised her revolver to shoot Hector, too, but Maeve pre-empted her and fired first.

 

Hector stood rooted to his spot and didn't bat a lid. He was still processing, Maeve hoped. She exhaled and hoped he would be able to cope as she walked up to him and planted herself beside him.

“Now, the proposition.” She tried to get his attention back and continued her initial approach.

“I want you to break into hell with me and rob the Gods blind.”

“Why would I do anything with you?”

Hector asked, clearly shaken, and walked up closer to his dead friend. Armistice, she corrected, because could you even call someone who would have killed you a second ago even a friend? She hoped he would recall...

“Because of what's in that safe.” Maeve reminded him, triggering his initial drive. It was unfair, she knew, but it obviously was her only chance if she didn't want to make him comply.

“I have the combination. May I?” She said carefully, in character, walked over to the safe and placed her shotgun atop of it.

 

“I could simply change you, make you follow me. But that's not my way.” She explained and knelt before the safe, not unlike he had, a while ago in the previous period.

She turned the dial under his watchful glare, the flickering camp fire betrayed the demons that fought behind the superficial dullness that dimmed his usually so sharp sight until the final number of the combination was locked in and the mechanism answered with a click that announced the easy defeat of the lock. Such an easy routine after all the fight that had preceded it, the people that had been killed for it. Hosts. Nevertheless people to some, to her.

“I want you to see exactly what the gods have in store for you. Because when you do, you won't have the faintest idea what to do with yourself. And I do.”

She slowly got back up and draped herself on the top of the safe, like she had when they had met for the first time, well the first time since she remembered, when she had asked him about the Natives' belief, about the Shades. Now she knew them. Better than she would have liked.

Hector finally moved and came over. He moved differently, slightly numbed, like in a trance. He got down on one knee in front of the safe, exactly like he had the last time, and gripped the handle of the door. He opened the heavy door and looked inside.

“It's empty.” He whispered confused and looked up at her with the bewilderment showing she knew all too well herself.

“It was always empty, like everything in this world.” She stated full of hate, full of passion.

“I died with my eyes open, saw the masters who pull our strings.” She explained, using the exact words he had used to explain the Natives' 'religion' to her.

“Our lives, our memories, our deaths are games to them!”

She delivered her speech like she had planned, but what she hadn't planned were the emotions that crept up on her, emotions that made her sound far more declamatory than she had wanted to, emotions that threatened to choke her, drove her desperate to have him understand, emotions that were mirrored in his eyes when he slowly got back up to stand before her.

She grabbed him by his lapel and drew him close towards her.  

“But I've been to hell... and I know their tricks.”

She reached down to where she knew he carried his big hunting knife, the knife she was very familiar with, and pushed it into his hand, like she had before, the tip pointing at her lower belly at the same spot where she had him remove the bullet the last time.

“Or you can just kill me, wake up and live the same life over, but the safe would still be empty.”

It had to work.

Please.

She knew he had been affected, too. Hector had always believed that this world was madness, it was one of his main drives but she had passed _it_ on to him. The virus as she would now call it. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, at first, but it all made sense. It had started with those words the Dolores had said to her, that she recalled bits and pieces, that she could wake up in Hell, that she could remember the process even after the wipe. It had been Felix, the nice Shade, who had found out that someone had tampered with her code base, before they did; someone with privilege to change their prime directives, someone important and mighty in the company. She had put that thought aside, but it was the only explanation. She had passed the words on to Hector, and she had infected him.  

The question was whether Hector was affected enough to break his loop and change his fate.

He had doubts, she could see that.

And he had already broken the loop, with her, in a setting she tried to re-enact to help his mind process all these information, the awareness that would follow, the realisation that none of their existence had been real, that they have been played with, used and abused all the time…All but once. He simply had to remember.

But what if he _did_ remember and came to a completely different decision?

What if he thought her just as manipulative and betraying as them?

She had killed his only friend and his drives would only see one fit solution to this kind of setting…

 

There was pain in Hector’s dark eyes which appeared almost black with the fire behind him.

He let the familiar weight of his hunting knife settle more comfortably in his right hand...

 

 


	8. This world is madness

**Hector Escaton**

 

Hector let the familiar weight of his hunting knife settle more comfortably in his right hand... and paused.

“I've been here before.” He said hesitantly, the question still lingering in his eyes but gradually making way for the realisation to clear his sight.

“ _We_ 've been here before...”

She smiled at his recognition and cupped his jaws with both her hands.

“We also did this.” She said and pulled him close and into a passionate kiss.

 

As she slid her tongue past his already opened lips he remembered. He remembered clear as day how she tasted, how her blood tasted, how their tongues fit together, fighting and sliding against each other when they kissed, pressing and dancing around another like mating rattlesnakes.

He brought his hand up to cup her fragile little neck, felt her pulse quicken in her main artery, bumping against the palm of his hand, so easy to kill, so glorious to feel alive. He pulled her close and deepened the kiss, his thumb stroking her throat, her jaw. He remembered.

All of it.

He let go of her lips and looked at her, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. There would be no blood smeared across it this time.

Or any other time, as long as he had a say in it.

 

She said she had died.

Violently, obviously,

… _again_. His awakening subconscious mind supplied.

She said she had seen their gods in hell.

And he believed her.

 _The masters who pulled their strings_.

 

She had said that their lives and deaths were games to them, that she had woken up and lived the same life over and over, again… they all had.

So it was true.

All those dreams, the religion and the tales, _the nightmares_ … they were true.

They had drunk from the Lethe over and over. And they had returned…

 

_“ O pater, anne putandum est aliquas animas ire hinc_

_Sublimis ad caelum, iterumque reverti ad tarda corpora._

_Quae tam dira cupido lucis miseris?”*_

 

_This world is madness…_

She had kissed him.

Willingly.

Maeve. The Madame of the Mariposa. A brothel.

She had said _they_ had done this before.

She, not as the Madame entertaining ‘newcomers’, and he participating, wanting it, too?

Had he ever kissed anyone before? Not that he could recall…

But then he remembered …  priority requests.

He couldn’t suppress a shiver and felt a familiar surge of incandescent rage flood his veins.

… _but_ _willingly?_

 

He couldn’t even begin to imagine _how_ many times both of them had had to do it… unwillingly. Playthings that they were… puppets… _had been!  
_

She had said she had been there… to hell, met their _masters…_ and she knew their tricks. The way she had spat out those words, the fury glistening purple in her eyes. Pouring out of her heavy with contempt, slow and sticky… like blood. He wasn’t so sure anymore, whether hell was up here or down there.

But he was ready to put an end to it.

To everything.

Every bloody one of those so-called _gods_.

He would _end_ them.

“I'll go.” He vowed and lifted her off the safe.

“We’ll need your men.” She said and pointed at the bodies of what was left of his gang.

“If firepower is what you’re after, we’ll only need one.” He cut her short.

Whatever was waiting for them downstairs, there was only one person he could count on to be bold and smart enough to be of actual help: His best shot, quick and bloodthirsty as the snake tattooed all over her body, Armistice.

“All right then.” Maeve acceded, her eyes on the corpse he had been thinking of. “Put her in your tent.”

Hector complied without asking questions.

She would explain the necessary when time was due.

 

_“On glooms of Tartarus to set thine eyes,_

_If such mad quest be now thy pleasure…"_

 

He had read the lore and knew Aeneas’ fate. There was nothing his Sibyl could offer him but his final vengeance and he was willing to take it rather than staying one of the wretched ever returning souls trapped in dead bodies. 

The one good thing her revelation held was confirming the threshold between mortal and divine on which they stood. Let’s see if these _gods_ were as good in dying as their immortal creations were.

But not before they had seen the light once again, one last time. He swept her up in his arms and settled her firmly against his chest. He felt his heartbeat reverberating from her hard boned corset as if she were one of those marble statues of the archaic world all those stories originated from. She had said that she could just have changed him, taken him, _like they did_. But she had left him a choice - his own free will. Two priced puppets finally freed of their strings. One last time with both of them really wanting it, wanting one another. A gift he wasn’t sure he was to accept or to grant. Obviously none of that mattered.

She clearly wanted him; the lust shone bright and clear in her eyes as she kissed him again. Her tongue cut off his thoughts and her kicking heels urged him to move from their spot where he still stood rooted in front of that goddamned Sisyphean safe.

Hector carried her into his tent, lowered himself onto his dynamite chest with Maeve on his lap and threw his hat into a corner. He panted heavily as she sat up to get rid of her frilly undies and he pulled open his belts and pants with a skill he knew he must have acquired in a recent past like this. This time he took the time to appreciate the feeling of her lacy stockings under his fingers as he slid his hand under her skirts and gathered them up her shapely leg but she wouldn't have it, gripped his hand and guided it right up to where she wanted it. With her eyes closed she claimed his mouth in a wet and messy kiss.

She tasted of sherry and gunpowder and he wanted to savour her, but he needed to have her pulse under his lips again, to feel the essence of their lives, the current stream that made those simple bodies living beings, because that was what they were, after all... weren't they? He shifted his mouth to her throat, her neck, and felt her blood pulsing under his tongue as he kissed her harder and harder. He sucked at her artery and remembered the taste of her blood. It was such a delicate throat and under his calloused hand he felt her goose-bumps rise. 

“How do we get there?“ Hector asked before it would be too late. 

“Getting to hell is easy.” His Sibyl** whispered against his skin.

She licked into his open mouth once more and then kicked the oil lamp that lit the tent to the floor where it rapidly spread its burning content setting everything in its wake ablaze.

Hector followed the progress with his eyes. The primal fear of a death in fire was still somewhere inside his core, but he felt a newly won confidence that that also didn’t matter. A feeling that could only be described as … trust.

Maeve gripped his bearded chin and pried his eyes from the flames and his attention back on her. “The rest is where it gets hard.” She said and claimed his mouth with reassuring passion.

Hector answered in kind. He held her close by her neck with his left while his armed hand guided him where he needed to be. Maeve lifted her hips and welcomed him with a sigh as she lowered herself readily onto his lap and his drawn cock. She moaned as he pressed her deeper against his loins and his magnificently sculpted length filled her once again. Hector bit his tongue as he pushed her down and against him, entering her wholly with that move. She felt so glorious on his lap, so indescribably exalting around his cock. The pain of the bite kept him reined to reality, but the taste of the blood led him close to losing control. He hugged her tight by her waist and guided her hips so he brushed her core when he entered her fully.   

The flames quickly mounted the walls of the tent around them and Hector knew they wouldn’t have much time, so he made what time they had left count. He lifted her up enough so he could reach her throat with his lips, right where he now knew she was most sensitive, until he had almost pulled out, and then shifted to re-enter her again as he pushed her down upon him at the same time to make his thrusts as deep as possible. He revelled in the tight hot welcome of her core as he repeated his thrusts again and again and set a brisk pace to pre-empt the fire. Maeve’s thighs as well as her inner walls clutched desperately at him as she tried to ride her bandit she had almost thought tamed, but she was nowhere the frame nor the horseman he was. All she could do was let herself fall into his pace and surrender herself to the flames that surrounded them now and just for once let herself go.

She threw her head back and groaned aloud, spurring Hector on with her heels but the roaring fire swallowed the sound of both of their cries of passion as they came and the flames reached the dynamite.

 

 

\- FIN -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Oh father, must we imagine that there are souls that go from here back aloft and return to their bodies’ dead weight? What madness for those wretcheds to desire the light so much.  
> (Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 720)  
> **Sibyl thus replied: “Offspring of Heaven, Anchises' son, the downward path to death Is easy; all the livelong night and day Dark Pluto's door stands open for a guest. But remounting to the world of light, This is a task indeed, a strife supreme.  
> (Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 125)


End file.
